mattinoz

anome said:

entropys said:

Umm. Why? Why?

Because if they didn't mention it at all, everyone would be "Apple Watch Ultra is dead!" and they're probably planning an update for next year.

Or possibly because announcing a new finish for it may help boost sales. People who might have considered an Ultra, but not been sure about the single finish choice available. (You can criticise people like that all you like, but they exist. Whether they exist in numbers sufficient for Apple to make money off them remains to be seen. I'm guessing they've got market research that says "Yes".)

danox said:

avon b7 said:

Nikon8 said:

Next get rid of Broadcom chips. 

I can't see that happening any time soon:

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/05/apple-announces-multibillion-dollar-deal-with-broadcom/#:~:text=Today Apple announced a new,cutting-edge wireless connectivity components.

I’m sure Broadcom knows that Apple probably won’t leave it at that…….

ecarlseen said:

Building a cellular modem is crazy-difficult.

While the overall specifications are public, how to make them work in the real-world involves lots of very carefully-kept trade secrets. The successful vendors, especially Qualcomm, use these trade secrets instead of patents so that they don't have to disclose them publicly.

Essentially, Apple is having to re-discover / re-invent these trade secrets internally. It's a long process driven by trial and error. It's not something you can arbitrarily schedule a completion date for. Intel sucked at this, which is why their modems generally sucked, why they never had a decently working 4G model, why they were never going to get to 5G, and why they more or less had to give away their modem division.  If Apple is planning on having a chip taped out, debugged, and in production next year that means feel they've cracked everything. Once they're started with actual production, they will probably be able to produce modems for existing and upgraded standards at a reasonably fast pace. 

An interesting revenge move for Apple would be to publish everything they've learned about building cellular modems (all of the industry trade secrets). This would nuke Qualcomm's balance sheet as cheap competitors would spring up all over the place. Qualcomm would still control the bleeding edge in the short term, but if it creates an inability to over-license their patent portfolio (they force customers to license patents they're not using and are widely considered exploitative in their licensing practices for their chipsets) it will cut hard into their earnings.